May/June 2004

I started out the window, looking onto the surging crowds with sadness and fear. I had always known the revolution might happen—as if my brother, Anton, would ever let us forget. He was always out on the streets, socializing with the revolutionaries, showing me the small red flags he brought home. It seemed he enjoyed upsetting Mama—telling her that since we had a family of aristocrats, we may be targets for the revolutionaries. After we came to stay with Aunt Evelina for a while, he told us to always be ready to leave. Well, he had before they sent him off to the war. But revolutions were for France, not my beloved Russia. Oh, how far we had come from the carefree days when we skated down the frozen creek back at home. As I stuck my head out the window, I closed my eyes and listened to all the sounds around me. Suddenly, I heard a strange, muffled noise. I realized it was Mama standing out on her balcony, silent tears running down her face, continuing even when Papa came out and put his arm around her. I could hear their voices, even over the roar of the throng. “Oh, Igor,” Mama cried, “why can’t the war just stop? Sometimes, I wonder what the tsar is really up to. Much as I love him, I cannot see how the war is doing any good for us. How could he send so many innocent men to their deaths? We all know that sending peasants with barely any training won’t help us win the war. And it breaks the hearts of so many families. All I want is for the madness to end and for Anton to return.” I stared out the window, looking on to the surging crowds with sadness and fear At this, I gasped. Mama had never spoken out against the tsar! Things like that were for Anton and his university friends, back from before the war . . . “Anitchka, hush, it will be all right,” my father soothed. “You know that we were forced into this. Do not worry. The tsar will soon sort this all out. And you and Anya are working in the hospital, nursing the soldiers, are you not? I’m sure that soon, one of them will have news of Anton.” But I could see his brow was creased, and I could hear the worry in his voice, a voice I knew well. “I certainly hope so,” Mama said tearfully. Papa began to say something, but I did not wish to hear more. When Papa was worried, things were not good. My strong Papa always knew how to solve our problems. *          *          * I longed to go back to our estate in the country. It wasn’t as grand or nearly as big as Aunt Evelina’s mansion here in Moscow, but it was wonderful. The workers were always good to us, because Papa gave them freedom and never let the supervisors beat them. Papa’s methods were often looked upon with scorn by our neighbors, but he didn’t care. And best of all, we were slightly isolated from the world, and we didn’t have to hear so much terrible news. It took days for letters to get from the city to our house. I used to hate this part of our life—I barely ever got to hear from my friends in the city but now I realized how lucky we were. We had a simple lifestyle there. When we were little, Anton and I would explore the forest. I remember when we found the shell of a robin’s egg. It was the lightest of blues, with a few faint cracks running through it . . . All of a sudden, Mama came into the room and interrupted my thoughts. “Come, Anya, it is time for us to work in the hospital. Are you sure you want to go today?” Mama asked me the same question every day. As if I didn’t feel my best when I was working, helping the soldiers. I disliked sitting around doing embroidery like Aunt Evelina always encouraged me to do. “Ladies don’t need to do work,” she would always say, “that’s what men are for.” It angered me so. Women certainly weren’t useless, like Aunt Evelina thought. Her talk was what sparked me into working at the hospital. *          *          * Mama and I walked out the door and wove our way through the crowd. We had been careful to put on the cloaks belonging to the maids and servants of the house. We knew that the swarming protesters must not see our nice things. Soon, we had reached the hospital. When I first started working, I had gotten frequent nightmares—seeing the once healthy men the way they were was almost a living nightmare. They were extremely thin, their heads were shaved, their beards ragged. But now I had gotten over it. I passed my time re-bandaging the wounds and telling stories of my childhood in the countryside, and it pained me and comforted me to see the happiness in their eyes as I talked about the smell of fresh buckwheat and the many flowers popping up in the springtime. I realized that these men were born to appreciate the wild, raw beauty of the Russian wilderness, and if I were given a choice, I would certainly fight to protect it. I would leave each bed with its occupant promising to tell me of any news about Anton. I knew we were lucky to have Papa still here—he had lost an arm in a war in Manchuria when I was four and wasn’t eligible—but I knew that the tsar was getting desperate, and if we weren’t lucky, he would soon be drafted. By the time we got home, the sky was already darkening. When we arrived at the door, Mama quickly put her cloaked arm around me and pushed me inside. Aunt Evelina rushed to greet us. “Anitchka!